Some Thoughts on National Health Insurance

This is not a simple topic and I’m more than a little concerned about the electorate coming to a rationale conclusion about it due to the tendency of the American Public to want everything explained in sound bytes of 30 seconds or less.

This lack of patience or the unwillingness to invest the time and effort necessary to understand complex subjects makes it relatively easy for people with an axe to grind masquerading as pundits to pitch nonsense.

I don’t know if Hillary Clinton’s plan is good or bad. I think it’s a start and something that should be studied by knowledgeable individuals. I do have some personal points for consideration however.

If everyone doesn’t have Health Insurance, people aren’t simply denied care, because that’s illegal. What will happen is that a sudden serious illness of someone without insurance will either (a) wipe out the life savings of that individual’s family, (b) drive the hospital at which the care was provided into dept or (c) be paid for by the rest of us through our taxes.

Health Insurance, like Automobile Insurance, is there to head off disaster not only for yourself, but for others as well.

Don’t expect it to be cheap either. Health Insurance is expensive. My wife and I enjoy Health Insurance where we work as part of our employment benefits packages. Her plan is better than mine. I’ve seen mine deteriorate over time due to rising costs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still in very good shape compared to most people, but things have deteriorated.

I’ve also had the pleasure of paying for COBRA, the extension of Health Insurance to a dependent who’s no longer covered and that’s really not cheap. You could go broke paying for that.

Everyone needs access to a minimum level of Health Insurance and yes, it should be mandatory to protect the Health Care System and the rest of us.

That doesn’t mean I’m not skeptical of government health care, I am. I’ve read the articles about a lack of dentists in the U.K. so some people are pulling their own teeth and two week wait times in Canada for angioplasty. I don’t know how true these stories are, but it’s easy to imagine a health bureaucracy emerging that is so bogged down in red tape that people can’t get the attention they need when they need it.

If I wake up with a toothache, I call my dentist and I’ll be in his office within a few hours and the pain will be gone a half hour or so after that. When I had my heart incident two years ago, I went to the hospital in the early afternoon; was diagnosed by a cardiac specialist; the necessary doctors and nurses were called in, because it was their day off, and the offending artery cleared out all before 5 PM. This despite the fact that the condition didn’t appear to be life threatening because my body was already generating new blood veins to get around the blockage. I’m not sure I would have made as quick a recovery if I had to wait two weeks.

On the downside, the hospital I received that care at has declared bankruptcy due to an unmanageable dept and will be closing within a month. Granted, this was due to bad management rather than treating large numbers of patients without insurance, because in my neck of the woods there aren’t all that many folks without insurance, but its still unconscionable that Bush can ask for $46 billion for the war in Iraq yet a major hospital closes, because of a relatively measly $100 million, without either the state or federal government lifting a finger to prevent it

I’d much rather see some of my tax dollars go toward subsidizing health care and health care facilities than going to Black Water or Halliburton. While I’m not sure Hillary has all the answers, I think she’s right that the answers need to be found.